


The Art of Losing

by Nokomis



Category: Bandom, Friday Night Lights, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Bodyswap, Crossover, Ensemble Cast, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-29
Updated: 2012-03-29
Packaged: 2017-11-02 17:11:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/371396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nokomis/pseuds/Nokomis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mikey Way and Tim Riggins are bodyswapped and My Chem fight a supervillain. Friday Night Lights/bandom crossover.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Art of Losing

**Author's Note:**

> Probably the only prior FNL knowledge needed for this is that Tim Riggins is a high school football player in a town obsessed with high school football; set in the early seasons of FNL.

Mikey Way blinked, and the scene before him didn’t change. 

He was standing on a football field, and dudes were running around and running into each other, and there were cheerleaders and a huge crowd and...

He was wearing pads and a helmet and seemed to be on one of the teams.

“The fuck?” he said just as a huge dude in red slammed into him.

*

Tim Riggins didn’t actually remember getting completely fucked up, but apparently he’d really managed it because he could swear that he was standing on a stage with a guitar staring out at a whole hell of a lot of screaming faces.

A dude with a fro was giving him a dirty look and kind of glancing down at the guitar, and Riggins figured he was supposed to be _playing_. He might have rocked it out on the air guitar a few times, but he didn’t have the first clue as to how to make music come out of the strings, so he just sort of pretended like he was playing and shrugged at the dude with the fro. 

His arms were different, he realized, looking down. Scrawny. And there was a tattoo on one of them, some ugly thing involving fire. Weird.

He would just stalk offstage, but he’d been in enough _situations_ to know that the best way to not get arrested or get his ass kicked was to just play along. 

Or not play along, he thought as the lead singer grabbed the other guitar player and kissed him. If anyone tried that shit on him, he was gonna get the hell out of Dodge, spindly legs or no.

*

“Are you okay? Because you kind of didn’t look okay out there,” one of the football players said. He wasn’t wearing a helmet and he was baby-faced and looked kind of geeky. “You looked kind of like you got the snot kicked out of you, and that just ain’t the Tim Riggins I know and sort of fear.”

“I’m--” Mikey had no fucking clue what he was. Definitely not okay. His head was still spinning from the hit he’d taken. “Who?”

The football player gave him a concerned look. “Look, Riggins, showing up for a game drunk is one thing, but are you stoned? Like, out of your mind seeing birdies flying around stoned? You know Coach is gonna probably kick you off the team, again, if you screw up.”

“I’m not Riggins,” Mikey said. “I think I’m having a nightmare. About football. Why the fuck would I be having a nightmare about playing football? In _high school_?”

“There goes the offense,” muttered the dude. “Come on, where are you going? The locker room’s this way.”

Mikey hated locker rooms. They just reminded him of the worst parts of high school. 

He struggled to get undressed, because that’s what everyone else was doing. It turned out that it was fucking impossible to get out of football gear - there were laces and straps and he felt like a fumbling idiot, like the first time he tried to undress a girl. 

He got stuck halfway out of his jersey.

No one seemed to think this was too odd an occurrence - the quarterback sighed and came over and jerked on the jersey until Mikey staggered free of its clingy embrace.

“Dude, Riggs, I thought you were cleaning up,” the quarterback sighed. The dude from earlier came over, too. Mikey felt strangely exposed, standing there allowing them to free him from the shoulder pads.

“You’d best snap out of it, Coach is not pleased with you. He’s going to tear into you. It’s gonna make that time he found out Mattie here was dating his daughter look like a picnic in the park.”

“Yeah, he might replace you with Landry here or something,” the quarterback, apparently Matt, said, pushing lightly at Landry’s shoulder. 

Mikey just said, “I’m not a football player. I’m not Riggins. This is... this is fucked up.”

“Yeah, _you’re_ fucked up,” said a passing player. “Bit surprise. But don’t worry, Smash picked up the slack. Again.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Landry said. “We still won, that’s what counts.”

Mikey was so very far from home.

*

“Where the hell am I?” Tim demanded as soon as they were safely on the bus. Apparently he’d... shown up... during one of the final songs, and afterwards he’d been corralled along with the rest of the band backstage, past the crowds and onto a bus. He was grody and sweaty and he could smell himself - and the other dudes - from here, and he kind of missed the bustle of the locker room.

At least he got to take off his football uniform after the game, he thought, feeling the t-shirt damp with someone else’s sweat cling to his shoulders.

“We’re in, um, Birmingham, I think,” said the lead singer. He turned to the drummer. “Isn’t that right?”

“Yeah,” agreed the drummer. “Birmingham sounds right.”

Tim glared. “Not the fucking city, freaks, I mean, how did I end up on stage?”

All four dudes exchanged looks. There were a lot of raised eyebrows. Tim got the feeling they were having a secret conversation. 

“Mikey, are you okay? You’re still taking your meds, right?” said the lead singer with a lot of touchy-feely concern. Tim backed a little bit away before he got a hug or something.

“I’m not _Mikey_ ,” he said. “I’m Tim Riggins, and I out on the field kicking the Rebels’ ass when suddenly I was on a goddamn stage with a guitar.”

“Is this another one of your jokes?” said the dude with the fro. “Because, Mikey, I hate to be the one to tell you but they aren’t actually entertaining, no matter how funny Pete found them.”

The other guys seemed to think it was a game.

“Are you a Civil War soldier?” guessed the lead singer.

“I think the slang is wrong for that,” the drummer said thoughtfully.

“I know, I know! You’re Iron Man!” the other guitar player said excitedly.

“What the hell does Black Sabbath have to do with anything?” Tim said, brow furrowed. “I’m a football player. And I want to know how I got here.” he glanced back down. This wasn’t his body. Tim Riggins didn’t have knock-knees. 

“You aren’t supposed to tell,” whined the guitar player.

“Besides, you know he meant Tony Stark,” said the lead singer reprovingly. “And, Frank, not everything revolves around Iron Man.”

Frank made laser-explosion noises. “Just because you’re cranky there hasn’t been a good Doom Patrol movie...”

Tim had no fucking clue what was going on. It was like being surrounded by multiple Landry Clarks. He rarely had the patience to deal with one dweeb, much less four masquerading as rock stars. “I’m out of here,” he said.

That was when he realized that the bus was moving.

*

“I think I’ve been body-swapped,” Mikey announced to Landry on their way out of the locker room. “Or else I’ve been knocked in the head and this is one of those extended dream sequences, you know, with the subconscious representation of hell.”

Gerard was going to be so pissed that _he_ didn’t get to be the one with the Twilight Zone experience. Mikey kind of couldn’t wait to rub it in. It would be total payback for having to wear a marching band uniform for a year.

Landry stopped short in his tracks. “Riggins? Did you just use multi-syllabic words?”

“I told you, I’m not fucking Riggins,” Mikey said, sidestepping Landry and trying to remember how to get out of this hallway. Why the fuck did every high school have that weird smell? “My name is Mikey Way, and I’m going to figure out how to get back in my own body.”

“Um,” Landry said. “Wait up, I think I want to be around for this one.”

*

“Maybe he’s been brainwashed,” said Gerard thoughtfully. “Like someone is trying to take us down from the inside by turning Mikey into a jock.”

“Who the fuck would be trying to ‘take us down from the inside’?” Bob asked.

“And why would they brainwash _Mikey_?” Frank added. Gerard glared. Frank hastily added, “I’m just saying, it’s not very strategic, to brainwash the bass player who doesn’t really say much in public. Why not you? You’re always yammering on, and sometimes kids even listen to you.”

Gerard threw a Jack Bauer action figure at Frank. Frank batted it away reflexively.

Tim really, really wanted off this bus. They’d only stopped calling him Mikey when he started reciting football trivia, starting with who had won the Texas high school state championship for the past ten years. Ray had checked his facts on the internet, and then they had all sat down to figure out what had happened to him.

“I’m not brainwashed,” he sighed. “I’m in hell.”

“Besides, it’s more of a mind-meld, if anything,” Ray said. “He has a complete new personality.”

“Maybe he’s a pod person,” Frank said excitedly. “Like, aliens beamed down a fake Mikey and got the personality implant mixed up.”

Tim didn’t think he could take much more of this, but he’d been informed that the bus didn’t stop for anything. They were playing a show in Austin the next night, and they had to get there on time.

Tim thought they were all a little too concerned with being prompt for a rock band. Especially a rock band with the very real problem of having him suddenly in their bassist’s body. What the hell did they think was going to happen when they got to Austin, he’d suddenly know how to play?

He pointed this out.

“I bet you have, like, muscle memory,” Frank said.

“Yeah!” Gerard agreed. “You should try to play something.”

Tim thought they were missing the point entirely. 

*

Landry took Mikey to an ice cream shop that was mostly empty, so that they could figure out what had happened.

“What if your body is just like an empty shell out there?” Landry said. “What was the last thing you can remember?”

“I was playing,” Mikey said. “Bass,” he clarified after a moment. 

“You play bass?” Landry said excitedly. “I have a band.” He pointed to his t-shirt. “Crucifictorious. We’re a Christian death metal band. Okay, we’ve only played two shows and I think the drummer is going to punk out soon to go to dental assistant classes.”

Mikey grinned. “So you’re kind of like Stryper?”

“What?” Landry exclaimed. “No! Blasphemer. There is no spandex or teased hair whatsoever involved in Crucifictorious.” 

“But think of the aesthetic!” Mikey said.

A blonde girl slid into the booth. “Landry, why are you hanging out with that loser?” she said, stealing a bite of ice cream and motioning towards Mikey with the spoon, splattering droplets of melted ice cream across the table.

“This, Tyra, is not Tim Riggins. This is a dude named Mikey who is somehow in Tim Riggins’ rugged frame,” Landry said.

“Hi,” Mikey said, giving a half-wave.

Tyra rolled her eyes. “Funny, Landry.”

Landry paused, then said, “So what were you saying about the aesthetic?”

“Just that if you should totally embrace the ridiculousness of 80s Christian metal and integrate that into your act! Only, you know, ironically. You could be like the Misfits!”

Tyra was gawking at him. She stage-whispered to Landry, “That ain’t Tim Riggins. He hasn’t looked at my boobs _once_.”

“That’s what I was telling you,” Landry said. “Mikey, really, what if your actual body is just slumped over somewhere like a ventriloquist’s dummy without someone’s hand up its ass?”

Mikey hadn’t considered that. “Let me borrow your phone.”

*

Tim was playing Grand Theft Auto with Ray when the phone in his pocket buzzed.

He dug out the phone and looked at it.

“You probably shouldn’t answer that,” Ray said cautiously.

It was a Dillon area code. Tim answered it.

“Um, hi,” said a voice that sounded suspiciously like his own. “Am I talking to Tim Riggins?”

In the background he could hear a snicker that sounded a lot like Tyra.

“Yep,” Tim replied.

A pause.

“Okay. Are you in my body?” Mikey asked. Tyra was full-out laughing now. 

“Yep,” Tim said. 

“Just wondering,” Mikey said, and hung up.

Tim laid the phone down and told Ray, “Your friend is in my body hanging out with my ex-girlfriend.”

“Good to know,” Ray said. 

*

When Mikey woke up the next morning, he was still a high school football player. It sucked.

He wandered into the kitchen of the house Landry and Tyra had dropped him off at the night before and poked through the fridge. It looked pretty much like the fridge in the bus, only bigger and thus with more moldy crap shoved in the back.

He made some coffee and found some Poptarts. He ached from the hit he’d taken on the football field. He’d hoped that he would magically wake up in his own body safe and sound on the bus, or else that this was a particularly crazy dream, but no such luck.

At least the hard-knock-to-the-head method had already been ruled out. If being slammed into out on the field hadn’t knocked Mikey back into his own body, nothing would. 

He sat down at the counter and dialed his own number. Maybe Tim would have an idea. Most of Mikey’s so far had been culled from comics and movies, and none were particularly practical. A large number of them, in fact, involved machines that didn’t actually exist. Mikey suspected that could be a hindrance. 

Tim answered with a mumbled curse. Mikey wondered if he sounded that ornery when he woke up. “Yeah, you’re still me,” he said, sipping his coffee.

“I thought maybe when I woke up I’d be home and hungover,” grumbled Tim. Mikey wondered if he sounded that petulant when he grumbled.

“Yeah, well, apparently not,” Mikey replied. “Do you have any idea why this happened? Piss off any voodoo queens? Run over a shaman’s cat?”

“Because I know so many shamans,” Tim said. “You’re from the freaky lot, you probably did this yourself trying to make up spells for some geeky game. How the hell did such dorks become rock stars anyhow?”

It wasn’t like that was the first time Mikey had been asked that question, but it was the first time he’d heard it out of his own mouth like that. He hoped Gerard wasn’t nearby. 

“I didn’t do anything,” Mikey said. “Why the hell would I want to be you?”

The laugh he got from the other end was surprisingly bitter. “Yeah, well, join the club.”

Mikey was halfway through an apology when he realized no one was on the other end.

*

Tim couldn’t wait to get back to his own body. 

He’d asked a bit about the whole groupie thing, because if there was one aspect of rockstardom that he could get behind, it was hot chicks throwing their panties at him.

“We don’t do that,” Ray had said patiently. 

Tim could hardly believe that. Hell, he got play just being on the Dillon Panthers. Lots of play. Good play. Surely dudes with guitars and a tour bus could manage, even if they were desperately dorky.

Gerard frowned and began to say a lot of things about respect and the power of femininity and not being a jackass. Tim felt like he was in Mrs. Taylor’s office, only without the great view. He managed to avert the rest of the lecture by asking Gerard if he’d talked to his brother yet. 

“I could have just made up the story about him being in Texas, you don’t know,” Tim said, offering the phone and hoping Gerard would just take the bait and leave him the hell alone already.

Gerard did; he scampered off with the phone and Tim could hear excited proclamations every few minutes. It was all, “No, this is nothing like Cable and Deadpool, it’s purely _physical_ ” and “What? No, Madelyne Pryor was a _clone_ ” and “Well, what about that time with the JLA with Kobra? Have you pissed off any supervillains?”

Tim was pretty sure that he was going to be stuck here forever. It wasn’t a comforting thought. 

Gerard kept sticking his head out of the back lounge to ask Tim questions: Could he recite Smashing Pumpkins lyrics? Hey, Frank, grab the camera - did he know how to dance? How did his head feel? Just answer instinctively, what was Mikey thinking of right then?

Tim did a lot of glaring in response. After the fourth time Gerard asked him how he felt, he finally snapped, “Like kicking your ass.”

Gerard flounced off to the back lounge. Bob gave him an amused look.

Yeah, Tim definitely missed Dillon. 

*

Landry and Tyra showed up at the front door just after Mikey got off the phone with Gerard.

Mikey was feeling a little bit better about the whole mysterious bodyswap thing. Gerard had pointed out that something so common in sci fi had to have its roots _somewhere_ in reality, distorted though the origin might be, and all Mikey had to do was figure out why he’d been swapped with Riggins.

Tyra had a camera with her and said something about getting blackmail pictures.

Landry rolled his eyes and pointed out, “Do you really think Riggins has any shame about anything? What are you going to capture on film that’s gonna ruin his reputation? Someone says something to him, he just kicks their ass anyway.”

“Party pooper,” Tyra said, and snapped a picture of Mikey wearing a pink feathery tiara.

“I’m trying to figure out why me,” Mikey said, “and why Riggins.”

“Maybe there is no rhyme or reason to this unforeseen turn of events,” Landry theorized. “Maybe just one second it’ll be like, poof, you’re you again.”

“What were you doing when you, you know, swapped?” Tyra asked. She was more sensible than Landry, Mikey respected that. 

“I was playing my bass,” Mikey said. 

“Were there any bright flashes or loud noises?” Landry asked.

Mikey gave him a look. “No, we’d decided to have a concert in a library.”

“There is no need to get snippy,” Landry said. “We’re just trying to get all the facts, come up with a hypothesis. I mean, unless you’re happy living Tim Riggins’ life.”

Mikey definitely was not happy with that. He was just now happy living his own life. “There weren’t any unplanned flashes,” he said. “It was a normal night. I didn’t eat anything weird, didn’t drink anything, didn’t take anything. I was just doing my thing then suddenly I was on a fucking football field.”

“Anyone weird there before you went on?” Tyra asked.

“No,” Mikey began to say, then stopped. “Wait.” 

He dug out his phone and called Gerard. “Wasn’t it yesterday that they had to escort that weird dude away? The one dressed like Doctor Doom and the Penguin’s halfwitted lovechild?”

“The one who was yelling that we’d regret ignoring him and who cackled evilly when they dragged him away?” Gerard asked.

“Yeah. That’s the one,” Mikey said. “Do you think maybe...”

“Dude, I am so on it,” Gerard said. Mikey would worry, but he knew Gerard had been planning his supervillain-interrogation techniques since Mikey was a toddler. Mikey was the one who’d had to pretend he was a supervillain, he should know.

He turned to Landry and Tyra. “We have a suspect.”

*

“Hey, guys!” Gerard exclaimed as he came out of the back lounge. “Remember that dude from yesterday? With the spandex and cufflinks and cape? Mikey thinks maybe he had something to do with the bodyswap.”

“The one who yelled about the fury of his wrath being more intense than a supernova’s rays and how his revenge was going to rain down on us like hellfire?” Frank asked, stretching his arms.

Tim glanced back and forth, like maybe this was another one of the jokes they kept making that just weren’t funny at all.

“That kind of makes sense,” Bob said. “I mean, this is the sort of thing a deranged wannabe supervillain would do.”

“True,” Ray said, nodding. “I’ll call Brian and see if he knows what happened to the dude.”

“The hell?” Tim said. Seriously, these dudes. “ _The hell_?”

*

“We meet a lot of crazies,” Mikey explained when Landry demanded to know why he hadn’t brought this up before. “It’s kind of routine.”

Tyra gave him a look. 

“What?”

She rolled her eyes. “No, nothing unusual happened. If you don’t count the crazy dudes yelling curses at you. Jesus.”

Mikey thought the best way to deal with snarky teenagers was to ignore them. It was a system he’d employed since he was a teenager. He spent some time trying to think if the crazy dude had said anything specific. He couldn’t believe that someone had actually managed to create the technology to do bodyswaps. And that _he_ was the victim.

This shit was way cooler in the comics.

“So are you coming?” Landry said. “Earth to Mikey. I know you’re in there.”

“Coming?” Mikey thought he’d stick around the house. No need to wander around in someone else’s skin. It was a little creepy. 

“To practice,” Landry said. He clearly thought he was clarifying himself, but Mikey was still lost. “Football practice.”

“It’s Saturday,” Mikey pointed out.

“Exactly. We have to go over last night’s game.” 

It was strange. Landry seemed sane until football came up. Who the hell wanted to spend time with a school-sponsored team on a Saturday? It was unnatural.

“I’m not going,” Mikey said. 

“You have to. Riggins is on probation,” Landry said. “He misses any more practices, Coach will throw him off the team.”

“Again,” Tyra said, rolling her eyes.

“I don’t play football,” Mikey said.

“You got that right,” Tyra said, pushing her sunglasses down over her eyes. “Come on, Landry’s dropping me off at work on his way.”

“I’m not a football player,” Mikey protested again as he followed them out the door. “Really.”

“Trust us, we know.”

*

It turned out that the Brian guy Ray called was magic or something, because ten minutes later they knew exactly where Doctor Penguin was. 

Dillon, Texas.

“Of course,” Tim said. He was echoing Gerard, he realized, but at least he had the decency to be sarcastic instead of excitedly enthusiastic. “Where else would he be?”

“So, here’s the plan,” Gerard said decisively. “We’ll get to the venue, do soundcheck, then borrow a van and head down to Dillon, get this sorted out, and be back in time to hit the stage.”

“Let’s kick some supervillain ass!” Ray exclaimed.

For a minute, Tim expected a huddle and a “Go, My Chemical Romance!” but then he remembered who he was dealing with. They sort of scattered about the bus, turning on video games and pulling out magazines while Gerard pulled a big sketchpad from behind something and pulled a Sharpie out of his pocket.

“So we need a plan,” he announced, opening the sketch pad to a blank page - Tim saw flashes of superheroes and dragons and a vampire kissing a mummy dressed as a schoolgirl on the intervening pages - and writing “MISSION FIND THE WAY” across the top.

Tim was the only one really paying Gerard any attention. Frank glanced up from his magazine, snorted, and said, “Are you really making puns with your own name now?”

“It’s Mikey’s name,” Gerard said stubbornly.

Ray snickered and strummed out the refrain of “Carry On My Wayward Son.”

“I am putting a stop to this pun business,” Bob announced. “What’s your plan so far?”

Gerard wrote, “Get to Dillon,” on the paper. He sketched out an outline of Texas and drew a little star where Dillon was. 

“Then what?” Tim said. He had a bit of vested interest in making sure this plan succeeded. Being a rockstar might be nice, but he didn’t want to be _this_ rockstar in _this_ band. They were fucking nuts.

“Then we...” Gerard trailed off. “We...” He looked to his bandmates for input.

“Find the motherfucker and trash his evil lair?” Frank suggested.

Gerard wrote that down on the list, illustrating it with a drawing of a cave on fire. Tim hadn’t known that was possible.

“Maybe we should reverse the polarity of his bodyswap machine and make sure Mikey’s back and _then_ trash the evil lair,” Ray said after a thoughtful pause.

Gerard nodded, then drew a machine that looked like a cross between a phone booth and a Delorean with a big lever labeled ‘polarity.’ He added a tiny Gerard with his hand on the lever. Tiny Gerard was wearing a cape and a mask and appeared to have muscles. 

“...what if the dude’s a magician?” Bob pointed out practically. “I mean, how would a machine have even swapped Mikey and Tim? They don’t even know each other.”

“Then we’ll have to coerce the fucker into reversing the spell,” Frank said. Tim was a little impressed with what a vicious little bastard the dude could be. “Does he have a pet? We could dangle his puppy over a crevice or something.”

Gerard and Ray looked horrified. Bob looked doubtful. “I don’t think that’s really a very heroic thing to do.”

“What are we, fucking goody-two-shoes Superman wannabes? If anything, we’re antiheroes. We can do whatever the fuck we want to bad guys.” Frank was practically bouncing with excitement.

“True,” Gerard said, looking interested. “I mean, maybe we can just threaten to dangle puppies over crevices or something instead of actually doing it.” He turned to Tim. “We’re really very good at appearing to be badass. And this motherfucker’s going down.”

Tim seriously doubted that. Frank added a puppy to the sketchpad, and Bob suggested they get nunchucks.

Maybe he and Mikey could get away with just, like, switching back and pretending like nothing had happened. They had the same haircut after all.

*

Football practice was just as hellish as Mikey had imagined it would be. First, they sat in a locker room that smelled like feet and watched the previous night’s game. The coach, who kept giving Mikey the stinkeye, pointed out every flaw. When he got to the final quarter, when Mikey had made his unwilling high school football debut, he paused the tape.

“Riggins, what the hell is wrong with you?” he demanded. “You looked like a deer out in headlights out there. You have a job on this team and I expect you to be able to do it properly.”

“Sorry?” Mikey said. He really didn’t think that he needed more yelling at, not when he was still aching from taking the hit itself. Coach pressed play, and Mikey watched himself get pummeled.

“Look at that! You just rolled over and showed your belly. You like losing, son? Because it sure looked like it out there.” Coach was turning an interesting shade of red. 

Everyone was staring at him so Mikey mumbled another apology. Some of the kids in the back muttered insults in his direction. Mikey really didn’t get what the big deal was - they hadn’t even _lost_ the game.

Fuck, now he was starting to even _think_ like them. He had to get out of here.

He tried to slip away when they were jogging out to the field, but Landry grabbed his arm and said, “Nuh-uh. You don’t even want to know what will happen to you if you skip this practice. If Coach doesn’t kill you now, Riggins will when he finds out. He had to _grovel_ to get back on the team.”

Mikey thought about ditching anyway, but he would be seriously pissed if he found out Riggins had made a beeline off stage, so he kept up with the other players.

It turned out that even in a physically fit body, football practice sucked. Mikey stumbled, tripped, missed things, and generally felt like a failure.

Finally Coach called him over. “Riggins, are you drunk?”

“No,” Mikey said petulantly. He kind of wished he were. He was pretty sure he’d pulled something.

Coach sniffed him suspiciously. Mikey felt momentarily bad, he knew he smelled pretty rank to the untrained nose. Coach, though, seemed to be immune. It was an admirable skill.

“Get back out there,” Coach said, mollified. Mikey reluctantly jogged back out on the field, only to have his way blocked by a cheerleader with her hands on her hips.

“You didn’t show up,” she said flatly.

“Sorry?” Mikey offered. 

She narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “Tim Riggins, did you just _apologize_ to me?”

“No?”

Then another small group of girls bounced up to him. One was holding a Tupperware container of cupcakes. Another had a brown paper bag. The third had a folder with “The American Revolution” written on the front.

“Timmy, we got your stuff,” one giggled.

Another patted his arm and suggested that she could give him a massage after practice.

Mikey felt disconcertedly like he was dealing with groupies. He extricated his arm from the girl’s grasp and turned them down. They all three looked like he’d dropkicked a kitten. The cheerleader’s lips were pursed like she was a schoolmarm. Mikey didn’t want any part of this potential meltdown of a social situation.

The cheerleader rolled her eyes and turned on her heel. “We’re going to talk after practice. Don’t think you’re getting out of it.”

Mikey sighed and continued out on the field, ignoring the rally girls’ mating calls. He tried to keep up with the exercises going on and still kept fucking up, much to the amusement of the guys around him. 

When he switched back, he hoped he and Riggins were far away and that Riggins had no clue about this, because he could tell that this body could totally kick his own’s ass.

He had just failed to move the practice dummy and was in the process of getting yelled at by the coach again when he spotted the ratty van on the other side of the parking lot.

His brother hopped out and waved his arms around a lot. Mikey muttered an, “I’ve got to go,” to the coach, who took in a deep breath to begin another rant, and took off.

He’d never been so glad to see a van in his _life_.

*

“They made me do _pushups_ ,” Mikey said despairingly. “Like, a lot of them.” 

The other guys made sympathetic noises. Tim thought Mikey was a wuss. A wuss that was in his body. It was very strange, seeing himself sitting there in the passenger seat.

They were driving out to the abandoned barn that the mythical Brian - Tim doubted he really existed, because seriously, who could find this shit out? - had said their looney was staying at.

Mikey kept shooting him strange looks. Gerard quickly caught Mikey up on the plan, which had expanded to include contingencies for freak blizzards, attractive female assistants and pits of sharks and snakes.

Tim could only hope at this point that the dude was crazy enough to recognize his crazy kindred and fix the problem.

“You didn’t fuck up the game, right?” he asked Mikey.

“I got sacked,” Mikey replied. “And the coach yelled a lot.”

Great. Just what he’d hoped for. 

“Oh, and some cheerleader was really pissed off at you,” Mikey added, as if it were an afterthought.

Tim told himself that he didn’t want to beat the shit out of _himself_. It could wait until after they got switched back.

*

Mikey hadn’t really realized how evil his face could look when he set his mind to it. He resisted the urge to slump down in his seat, and tried to ignore the death glare he was getting from Riggins.

“I like the shirt. Ironic,” Mikey told him. 

Riggins glanced down at the t-shirt emblazoned with Mikey’s name. “All your clothes smelled like ass.”

The van turned down a bumpy gravel road.

Finally Riggins burst out with, “What did Lyla say exactly?”

“Which one was Lyla?” Mikey asked. “Because, dude, you have _groupies_.” He turned to Frank. “Do you remember football players having groupies? Rally girls were foisting cupcakes and beer and completed essays on me like there was no tomorrow.”

“Seriously?” Frank said. “No wonder they’re such douches.”

“Just because you losers don’t know what to do with girls,” grumbled Riggins. “Here’s a hint: playing video games and ignoring them is the wrong approach. And Lyla was the cheerleader.” He looked expectantly at Mikey.

“The uppity one who yelled at me?” Mikey said. “I don’t remember exactly, but she wasn’t happy.”

“You’d better not have screwed things up with her,” snapped Riggins. “I did a talk show on Christian radio to try to smooth things over.” 

His tone conveyed that this was undoubtedly the biggest sacrifice a male had ever made for a female, and that he couldn’t imagine why it wouldn’t have worked.

Mikey shrugged. He hadn’t done anything wrong. “Hopefully you’ll be able to find out for yourself soon,” he said as a dilapidated barn loomed on the horizon.

“I guess that is a pretty cool villain hideout,” Gerard acknowledged. He’d been ranting about how undignified it was to have a hideout in a barn, but it turned out that it wasn’t a big red and white Fisher Price interpretation of agricultural architecture, but rather a grey, leaning mass of splintered wood and unhinged doors. It looked like a haunted barn, or that it might collapse if they pulled the van too close.

Mikey wasn’t sure that they wanted to go in there. “It smells like a trap.”

“Yeah, what if there are trapdoors leading to pits filled with cobras?” Frank said. 

“Or a guy in a mask swooping around on wires yelling about crazy kids?” Riggins grumbled.

“Dude, you’re in someone else’s body right now,” Bob pointed out. “I really don’t think you should mock the ridiculousness of being wary of cobra pits.”

Gerard was looking intently at the piece of paper he had sketched out their plan on. He’d used little X’s and O’s to mark out their positions, Mikey noted. He wondered if Riggins had explained offense and defense to them. 

“I think we should stick together. Go in en masse,” Gerard said. “A charge might intimidate the guy.”

“Or send him into hysterics,” Riggins said, glancing at them.

Mikey scowled at him.

They clamored out of the car.

“Can someone tell me again why we didn’t bring the bodyguards?” Riggins said. 

“Because we didn’t want them to fret,” Ray said. “They have enough to worry about without knowing we’re off fighting evil.”

“Aren’t they going to be worried when you turn up missing?” Mikey asked. 

“We climbed out a window! It was so middle school,” Frank said excitedly. “Ray got his hair caught in the drainpipe he was shimmying down.”

“That part sucked,” Ray said, showing Mikey where a small chunk of hair was missing. Mikey pretended to be able to see it. 

“We put a, ‘Quiet! D&D in progress,’ sign on the door and locked it,” Bob said. “Gerard even drew an intimidating wizard.”

“Good thinking,” Mikey said, impressed. The entire crew understood to keep clear of particularly intense roleplaying games, lest someone break character. Once after Mikey came back from his honeymoon break, Cortez had given him a bear hug and told him to never, ever leave him responsible for Mikey’s role in the game ever again. Gerard was a _fierce_ competitor. 

They turned to the barn and marched towards the front doors, which were hanging open. Mikey couldn’t see any light inside, and he began to feel nervous about this plan. Riggins was sort of right, they weren’t exactly the Avengers. Hell, they weren’t even the Doom Patrol. They were five dudes in a band and one high school football player, who couldn’t even help because _Mikey_ was the one in possession of the muscular bod. 

And rather than feeling as badass as John McClane, Mikey just felt sort of awkward, strangely proportioned and like he was wearing gross sweaty workout clothes. This would go so much more smoothly if he had on badass boots or at least a cool jacket that could flutter like a cape.

They all paused momentarily before crossing the threshold, but then Riggins took a swaggering step forward, and they all followed.

It was dark inside the barn. 

Mikey had thought maybe some natural light would come into play once they got inside, like always happened in horror movies, but instead the barn remained pitch-black. Ray jogged back out to the van and returned with a flashlight. He shone it around, and all they could see was barn-type stuff: piles of hay, stalls, rusted pointy metal things sitting around looking foreboding.

There was nobody in sight.

“Come out, come out, where ever you are,” Gerard called. “Motherfucker!”

His voice echoed around the empty space. No response.

“Maybe he’s not here yet,” Riggins said. “He did have to get here from Alabama.”

“True,” Ray agreed.

They walked out of the barn, climbed back into the van, and waited. The barn stopped being creepy after four minutes. Frank’s questions about whether Mikey and Riggins tried out each other’s equipment stopped being funny before they even finished coming out of his mouth. Mikey discovered how annoying his eyeroll could be from the other perspective. He picked at a hangnail on Riggins’ hand.

After half an hour, they could see a car slowly making its way down the gravel road. As it drew closer, they realized it was a lime green Pinto. Riggins began to snicker, and said, “Okay, maybe the intimidation plan might work.”

The car puttered to a stop beside the van, and a scrawny dude climbed out. He was wearing a faded red polo shirt and chinos. He looked like a Target employee.

“Is that the dude?” Riggins whispered incredulously.

“We said he was lame and that’s why we ignored his threats!” Frank hissed.

“Yeah, but... that dude’s seriously lame,” Riggins pointed out. “How’d he manage?”

“It’s always the quiet ones,” Ray said. “Look at Gee.”

“What?” Gerard said, whipping his head around to glare at Ray.

“Nothing, honey, go back to your knitting,” Bob said. Gerard threw an old french fry from off the floor at him.

“Can we engage the fucking enemy already?” Frank asked.

“Preferably before he runs away,” Riggins agreed. “ _Someone_ ’s out of shape, I don’t know if I could catch him.”

Mikey looked around for another moldy french fry, but gave up when everyone started climbing out of the van, so he followed.

“Uh, Uh,” said their target.

“Look here, Melvin, we know the gig,” Gerard said. “Give it up or else we give _you_ up.”

Sometimes Mikey wished his brother had a mute button. Melvin looked confused. “What?”

“What the hell did you do?”Riggins demanded. He seemed to be attempting to loom, but did more of a teeter.

“Ha ha! My plot succeeded!” Melvin cheered.

“Why?” Mikey asked.

“Why’d it succeed?”

“No, why’d you do it?” Mikey said. He tried to raise an eyebrow, but apparently Riggins wasn’t good at that, as the reflex felt rusty.

“Because!”

“That’s not a good plot,” Ray said. “Just swapping people because? That’s not very villainous. That’s, like, random.”

“Wait, no, I had a reason!” Melvin said. He looked down at himself. “I’m not dressed properly. Can I put on my costume? It’s hard to cackle in chinos.”

“Aren’t they less restricting than spandex?” Bob asked mildly.

“It’s psychological,” Melvin explained. “Please?”

“He did ask nicely,” Gerard said.

“You just feel bad for him,” Frank said. “What happened to our plan? Puppies, man, fucking _puppies_.”

“There’s no precipice,” Ray said. “Maybe we should ask nicely.”

“Will you swap us back, please?” Mikey said.

Melvin snorted. “See, I knew it’d be awesome to see Riggins grow a heart.”

“Ha! So you know Riggins!” Gerard exclaimed. “It’s not our fault at all!”

“You both incurred my wrath!” Melvin said, voice cracking. “I lost two hundred dollars based on Riggins’ performance at last week’s game!”

“I did great last week,” Riggins said.

“I know! I was hoping you’d be too drunk to take out the opposition!” Melvin whined. “And you!” He pointed at Gerard.

“What’d I do?” Gerard asked. 

“You didn’t sign an autograph for my little sister! She’s thirteen, man, that broke her heart!”

“Then... why’d you swap out Mikey with Riggins?” Gerard asked. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Yeah, motherfucker, you’re crazy,” Frank chimed in loudly. Mikey noticed that Bob and Ray were slipping away, so he stepped in and tried to look threatening. Melvin’s eyes darted around.

“I thought... I don’t know what I thought,” Melvin said to Gerard. “That you’d be miserable. Like in your video? I meant to switch you, but must have gotten the wrong hair from your dressing room.”

“That’s really creepy,” Mikey said.

Gerard snickered. “Told you that your hair’s looking thinner.”

“True, Mikey,” Frank said seriously.

“I hate you all,” Mikey said. 

Riggins grabbed Melvin’s arm. “How do we switch back?”

“I... I’m not telling!” Melvin stuck out his tongue.

Just then, there was a bright flash, and Mikey... Mikey was holding Melvin by the arm. He blinked a few times, then looked around, and could see Gerard, Frank and... Tim Riggins.

“Fuck yeah,” he said excitedly.

Bob and Ray wandered back around from the other side of the car, each holding a voodoo doll. 

“This here was the problem,” Bob said. 

“They were in the backseat of the Pinto,” Ray said. “We swapped back the helmet and the guitar. Did it work?”

Mikey dropped Melvin’s arm, ran over, and gave them each a hug. Riggins gave a half-nod and a thanks. Gerard took the voodoo dolls and inspected them closely. 

Frank jabbed at Riggins’ doll’s tummy. Riggins half-doubled over, then straightened up and threatened to kill Frank.

“I’m not even wearing my uniform!” Melvin cried, and glared. “I had laser pointers on the gloves. Those things can cause retinal damage!”

“What should we do with him?” Mikey wondered.

“Feed him to cannibals!” Frank suggested. “Or give him a wedgie!”

“I can do that last one,” Riggins said. “Atomic, even.”

“No,” declared Gerard. “We don’t need to take revenge.”

They all gave him a look.

“I don’t think that Melvin here is going to do anymore voodoo,” Gerard said confidently.

“Okay, Horatio Caine,” Ray said. “Why not?”

“Because,” Gerard said, holding out his hand with a flourish. “I just got a whole clump of his hair, here, and if he does anything else I’m gonna make the fucking voodoo doll to end all voodoo dolls. He’ll be lucky if the worst thing to happen to him is a bodyswap.” He turned to Melvin. “There could be _tentacles_ involved.”

Melvin paled. He’d clearly read the same comics as Gerard. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”

“Damn skippy you won’t,” Mikey said.

Riggins glared. “I know where you live.”

They all climbed into the van. 

“Does anyone think that was maybe anticlimactic for a big showdown?” Frank asked. “We didn’t get to blow shit up _or_ make dramatic proclamations. Well, except Gerard here.”

“Hey, me and Bob did stealth work!” Ray said. 

“Will you please drop me off in town?” Riggins said, clearly eagerly anticipating getting to leave them behind.

“I suppose,” Mikey said. 

“Then we have to get to our show.”

“Yeah, Mikey, you have to make up for fucking up the last two songs last night,” Frank said.

Mikey was totally glad to be back.


End file.
